Exact Match

Exact match shows your ad only for searches that mean the same thing as your keyword, with the tightest control of the three match types.

"Exact" doesn't mean word-for-word anymore — Google still applies "close variant" matching for plurals, misspellings, abbreviations, and same-intent rephrasing. "[running shoes]" as an exact match keyword can still match "running shoe" or "jogging shoes," which surprises advertisers who remember the stricter, pre-2018 version of exact match.

Exact match gives the most predictable, controllable traffic of the three types, at the cost of missing query variations you haven't explicitly added as keywords. It's the standard choice for high-intent, well-understood keywords where precision matters more than discovery.